Lotus pleased with Kovalainen’s “brilliant job”

Heikki Kovalainen passed his first test as a Lotus driver with flying colours, ending the first day fifth fastest overall.

Lotus technical director Nick Chester said the team were impressed by his first day as a substitute for Kimi Raikkonen.

“We feel he’s done a brilliant job today, particularly with all the procedures and getting used to driving a new car,” said Chester.

“We felt it might take a little bit of time but actually straight away in P1 he was already looking after the car very well. He got into P2, fifth quickest, good long runs, I think he’s done a great job today.”

Kovalainen described his first day in the car as “pretty smooth”.

“We?óÔé¼Ôäóve had no major issues on track today and we just need to keep chipping away to see how good we can get the car for tomorrow and Sunday.

“We lost a bit of track time in the morning, but the car balance was reasonably good straight away. I was able to settle in and work immediately on the set-up and tyre work.

“All the procedures and routines are quite similar up and down the pit lane, plus I?óÔé¼Ôäóm familiar with all the systems from driving with a Renault engine already this year and previously, so it was a pretty straightforward day.”

Very glad for Kovalainen to have such a good first day driving for Lotus. Wouldn’t that be something if he does end up scoring decent points or better yet, a podium finish. Timing is everything in life, and F1. Maybe this is his time.

Such a shame he got the boot from McLaren . He was the perfect number two driver, helping Lewis to take the WC title. They think having two fast drivers is a godo thing, but would Lewis still be at McLaren if button had not joined? I think so. Would McLaren be doing better with Lewis then they are now? I think so. If McLaren have another bad year in 2014 they are going to be called and seen as a mid table team.

They are 5th place with 95 points.
4th placed Lotus have 297 points
no podiums, no poles.

If McLaren have another bad year in 2014 they are going to be called and seen as a mid table team.

I’m by no means a McLaren fan but I think you’re statement is far far away from becoming a reality. McLaren are no where near to becoming considered as a mid-table team, even if their results are hugely disappointing. Were Ferrari ever considered a mid-table team during their barren years? Absolutely not. Consider how many years of bad results it has taken Williams to be finally classed as a mid-table team. I think McLaren are a long long way off being considered anything but an underperforming top team.

Isn’t the more important point that Caterham lost out worse than McLaren by sidelining/losing Kovalainen? Perhaps they would be ahead of Marussia in the WCC? I have to admit to being quite impressed by what he appears to be doing so far this weekend.

I highly doubt Caterham would be ahead of Marussia if Heikki were drving for them, I think Pic and van der Garde are doing a good job considering they’ve finished ahead of Marussia every race since Canada if I’m correct. Marussia just so happened to have a better car in a race where there were a lot of retirements. We shouldn’t forget aswell that when Heikki drove the Caterham earlier in the year, he described the car as being on a knife edge, and that it was more difficult to drive than the 2012 car. In my view Caterham have a solid driver pairing, Pic is consistent, a decent qualifier and has good race pace and he’s only 23 so there is still more to come from him, and van der Garde has improved over the year. In my view Pic is the strongest driver in the backmarker battle, I agree Bianchi has better outright pace but Pic has a better blend of speed and consistency.

It really comes down to the fact that Heikki could have beaten Bianchi in Malaysia. It was Pic and VDG’s 2nd race for Caterham and even thought Bianchi was on fire, you have to think Heikki would have had the advantage. That’s all it would have taken for Caterham to have secured 10th place. That one race was the race for the final cash-winning spot (assuming low attrition rates for USA and Brazil… though things did change in Brazil last year).

I agree to some extent, I think with Heikki already being integrated into the team he could have pushed Marussia more but even he would have struggled because realistically Marussia did have the better car in the first three races, the only reason Caterham are ahead now is because they have developed their car more, Marussia can be as slow as they like now, so long as their aren’t any crazy races to come in the last two races. I do agree with your point though, if Caterham were to have had Heikki and Charles that would have been the best lineup to get 10th in the constructors, but I do feel that it was the right decision for Caterham to hire van der Garde because Heikki shouldn’t be in a Caterham, Heikki realistically should be in a solid midfield team.

It was always a wise decision for Lotus to opt for Heikki: one of the few drivers (if any) to have actually driven a 2013 chassis, and his form in FP has shown just that, despite being a good part of a 0.5-1 second off Grosjean on his long runs, but on a reasonable note, Grosjean is in the form of his life now.

I know it’s just a little, but so far the replacement is very succesfull ! In the last races, GRO > RAI, now KOV > GRO, so the result is KOV > RAI ! If KOV will finish the race in a better position than GRO, some might wonder why Lotus did not hire KOV more time ago. Kinda justified to wonder. Also, makes one wonder if Ferrari did a good move by hiring back RAI… instead of somebody else, younger… like Hulk, for ex.

OK, I was kidding a little, but mostly… serious, although not much about that “logic”. What I wanted to underline with that “logic” is that things are very relative in F1, that Kimi is not young anymore (and maybe shouldn’t be regarded anymore as a benchmark that easy)… and we can see some succesful replacements, although most people did not expect that. At least so far, Lotus has no reason to cry over RAI. That’s a fact.
But you must be kidding indeed with that comparison between GUT and ALO. I’m comparing just team mates, while you’re comparing different cars too. Hulk is great, but my impression is that Sauber is quite on par with Ferrari for some races already, and mostly it wasn’t Hulk “genius” that raised Sauber’s game so much. So, I really think that now Sauber is on par with Ferrari, if not even better. Both Saubers finished 2nd FP in front of the Ferraris. Go figure.
Goind back to KOV, at least so far, he got the best lap time with a Lotus.

We can’t call a replacement succesfull because a driver made a better lap time than another during practices: while one driver is tweeking the car with the tank almost empty with the option tyres, the another one maybe is making race simulation with the tank full and the hardest tyres and viceversa. You can’t compare drivers during practices, because it doesn’t decide anything. Also, they’re running without pressure. The comparison should be done during Sunday.

How is Kovalainen better than Grosjean, did you see their long run pace? Grosjean was a second to half a second quicker on the first ten laps of their long run, I suppose you could say KOV>GRO for qualifying pace and GRO>KOV for long run pace.

I don’t know, practices doesn’t say anything about a driver or car performances. He made the most laps on the second practice, showing that he wants to extract the most of the car, and I hope he get’s a lot of points on Sunday for the goodness of Lotus. Having said that, I still think Lotus made the wrong decision hiring him for the job.

I really think we’re reading a bit too much into this. He was consistently half a second a lap slower on his long run than Grosjean, and the chances are his qualifying lap was pretty much on the lowest fuel (to give him practice).

Stil, a good day at the office nonetheless, but my money is still heavily on Grosjean prevailing fairly comfortably.

Cant wait till Kimi Alo, next year its going to be embarrasing for Kim, if Kov is even close to on Gro pace, then wow. Beforeanyone blames it on Kimi’s back he as been slow v Gro even when Gro was going through hard times, Gro as always been n his pace in qually. Im starting to think Lotus is the fastest car, do we think Gro is faster than Alo, Ham and Ros? No course we dont so how is he beating them? That Lotus is faster than we think and it does not look goodon Kimi does it.